Why Data Security is Essential for your Business

The last half of the 20th century saw computing and the internet introduced to the world, though for most of the population, it remained a distant promise of hope for future generations. The 21st century, however, has seen the massive expansion of connectivity and all things virtual. We are now witnessing the realisation of phenomena previously only known from sci-fi fantasy. Though perhaps without the flying cars and hoverboards – for the moment, at least.

Cloud computing has seen an enormous rise since Amazon Web Services were introduced in 2006, now as many as 96% of American enterprises making use of the cloud in one way or another, and the industry is expected by Gartner to be worth $411 by 2020. This points to a vast amount of business information potentially vulnerable to attacks.

Those London based, small to large businesses looking for assistance with data security issues will find that as this is such a crucial aspect of modern computing, London IT support services will be well equipped to provide the necessary solutions.

Why is data security so important?

For all businesses, data is very important and needs to be protected for the safety of the organisation and its future. Each and every enterprise stores sensitive and confidential data of all kinds, and this means the security of that data is also important. This could be vital information about the business, about its products or services, business plans, financial plans, or even information and details relating to clients and customers.

For every business, data is an asset that has a range of different functions and uses. It can be used for risk mitigation, revenue optimisation, along with a number of other features that can help to improve and develop the organisation.

A business that uses financial systems, such as processing payments from customers by taking credit card details online, may be particularly at risk to a data breach. Financial systems make up as many as 35% of all data breaches. In 2017 the Equifax data breach released the sensitive personal information of more than 143 million Americans.

A breach on this scale shows that it is not only small businesses at risk, and in 2011 the Sony Playstation Hack exposed the data of 77 million. If this can happen to a giant like Sony, then it can surely happen to small and large businesses alike, and all should maximise security. Even if it doesn’t concern financial information, a data integrity failure could lead to a trojan horse being planted in the software of a company, and this could allow the perpetrator to pass on secrets to competitors.

In addition to the possible losses of data, stolen data or finances, any security breaches could be severely damaging for the reputation of a business. When clients or customers trust a company with sensitive information, they will expect for this to be honoured. Even when the business is not responsible for an attack, unintentional failures and breaches have the potential to ruin the reputation – and perhaps the future – of a business.

What can businesses do to improve security?

• Develop a security plan – Having a strategy when it comes to your security is something that could mitigate your losses and prevent future attacks. Such policies will determine which employees have access to different types of data, and can help to keep things organised.
• Backup data regularly – When organisations are hacked, the loss of data can be seriously damaging, so management should be prepared for this. Data can easily be lost or corrupted in a security breach. A strict routine of backing up all data, either automatically or manually, on a weekly basis, is the best way of avoiding this.
• Data recovery – This is the process of reclaiming data that has been lost from corrupted or damaged storage. For this process to be the most effective, your response to any breach will need to be quick and efficient in order to minimise losses.
• Virus protection – Virus or malware programs act to replicate themselves into other programs and damage important data. As well as corrupting data, they can also leak important information, spread spam and confidential details. Without advanced antivirus software, companies are defenceless to malicious attacks, which are becoming more sophisticated by the day.
• Multi-factor authentication – with basic password-only systems of authentication, businesses are more vulnerable to attacks. Multi-factor authentication adds another layer of security, as users are asked to verify their passwords with a code that only they have access to. This model of security is becoming standard, and businesses would do well to make use of it.
• Firewall – These are security systems that protect networks, monitor traffic and control it following a certain set of rules. Firewalls work as a barrier between networks that are internal, and those that are external, such as the internet. They can restrict traffic that may be dangerous or contain viruses.

A programme for the protection against attacks has become something that most businesses are expected to follow. However, as hackers and malicious software have also worked hard to develop and sufficiently to keep up with the times, the protection against attacks needs to be doubly reinforced in order to be effective. With valuable data that could spell out catastrophe in the wrong hands, many enterprises don’t realise the losses they can befall – until it actually happens. With so much at stake, we would all be well advised to implement a plan that keep things safe and sound.